“We will not yield a single inch of our borders to foreigners…the struggle over maritime rights has not ended…we are ready for war.”

The message of this recruiting video is that China recovered Macao and Hong Kong in the 1990s, and the PLA Navy now needs China’s youth to help it seize the coastal state rights of China’s neighbors, advancing the Chinese nationalist narrative of “reunification,” albeit reunification with places that have never been part of China.

Though it closely copies the format of the United States’ 2007 Seapower video, the message of this Chinese video is nationalistic, unilateralist, and expansionist — nearly the opposite of the U.S. 2007 Seapower video which emphasized cooperation, internationalism, humanitarianism and stability.

The most aggressive section begins at about 1:30, where the video shows maritime territories and coastal sovereign areas of Japan, and Malaysia, followed by zooms on outposts of the Philippines and Vietnam, then a waving PLA flag and extensive combat footage. Of course there has actually been very little naval combat over the last half century, so the footage is from movies, exercises and computer generation.

Full text translation appended below courtesy of David Cowhig. See his many recent translations at 高大伟在美国华盛顿人的博客. Additional articles (many by him) and translations (all by him) from his time in Beijing in the 1990s are available here. Follow him on Twitter (高大伟) @gaodawei.